Raytheon bidding for military cargo plane contract

Defense giant Raytheon Co., stepping up its makeover from parts supplier to prime contractor, is vying for a contract worth up to $6 billion to provide the Army and Air Force with a product not usually associated with an electronics company: a cargo plane.

While it would use an airframe built by its partner, the Spanish manufacturer CASA, the Waltham company is bidding to be prime contractor for the Joint Cargo Aircraft, managing the program while producing the plane's communications systems.

Competing with the Raytheon-CASA bid is a team led by another systems integrator, L-3 Communications Holdings Inc. of New York, in partnership with Italian aircraft maker Alenia. The Army is expected to award the cargo plane contract as early as this week.

"This is for what we call the last tactical mile, the places where some of the larger airplanes can't get in," said Army Lieutenant Colonel Carl Ey , spokesman for the Joint Cargo Aircraft program. "It significantly increases the runways we can get in and out of across the globe."

Army officials are planning to buy as many as 75 and Air Force officials as many as 70 of the new planes, which will ferry troops and light equipment into battle zones and other fields of operation, Ey said. The planes will replace C-23 Sherpa airliners and CH-47 Chinook helicopters, as well as some truck transports .

Awarding prime contracts to electronics companies rather than builders of platforms, like jets, ships, or tanks, is a relatively new trend at the Pentagon, reflecting a recognition that increasingly sophisticated communications, command-and-control, surveillance, and targeting systems have become among the highest value components of today's weapons systems, said Raymond Jaworowski , senior aerospace analyst at Forecast International, a Newtown, Conn., research firm.

There is also a political aspect to the trend, Jaworowski suggested. By giving prime contracts to US electronics companies that team with European manufacturers, the Pentagon avoids a domestic backlash against US taxpayer funds going to foreign contractors. At the same time, it is backing programs that have additional sales potential with NATO countries, driving down production costs for the US military services. Another recent example is the 2005 award for the next US presidential helicopter to Lockheed Martin Corp., which will be prime contractor and electronics maker for a helicopter produced by its European partner, AgustaWestland.

Raytheon has been working since 2004 with CASA, a Spanish arm of the European Aeronautic Defence & Space Co., parent of the Airbus consortium that builds passenger jets. For the Joint Cargo Aircraft program, the partners will be using CASA's twin-turboprop C-295 transport aircraft that has been in service since 1999 and is flown by the Spanish military and seven others around the world.

The US version, including Raytheon's advanced systems, would be the most capable, able to fly higher than either the Sherpa or Chinook and expose troops to fewer risks. Raytheon's role would be to "missionize" the aircraft, equipping it with communications systems, defensive avionics, combat identification technology, and "blue force tracking" that would enable it to operate in a networked environment.

"It really plays to the two real strengths of this company -- mission systems integration and mission support," said Jim Hvizd , vice president for Raytheon's cargo aircraft program at the company's Space and Airborne Systems division in El Segundo, Calif.

Mission support has been a growing focus for Raytheon, the largest Massachusetts-based defense contractor. Last week, the company won a contract valued at up to $11.2 billion over the next 10 years to support live training exercises at Army bases in the United States and abroad, virtual training with simulators, and computer modeling of battlefield scenarios.

L-3 Communication's rival entry in the Joint Cargo Aircraft competition is the C-27J transport, built by Alenia. L-3 officials declined to discuss their program.

Raytheon and CASA already have tested prototypes of their cargo aircraft. With production plants ready to go in Seville, Spain, and Mobile, Ala., the Raytheon-CASA team could begin delivering the transport planes to the Army and Air Force within a year.

Robert Weisman can be reached at weisman@globe.com.